Book Reviews
Review: The Glamour Girls of Bill Ward
The Glamour Girls of Bill Ward Alex Chun Fantagraphic Books Street: 08.15 The Glamour Girls of Bill Ward captures Ward’s most impressive pinup girls of the 1950s. The book includes a great biography of Ward as well as high-quality images of the babes that made him famous. Ward started his professional cartoonist career at the
Review: Chance in Hell
Chance in Hell Gilbert Hernandez Fantagraphics Books Street: 08.01 Gilbert Hernandez is a crafty son of a bitch. He weaves a story that is as poignant as it is troubling and tense. Chance in Hell tells the story of Empress, an orphan who is raised in what can only be described as a post-apocalyptic no-man’s
Review: Things Just Get Away From You
Things Just Get Away From You Walt Holcombe Fantagraphics Books Street: 06.15 In Things Just Get Away From You, Holcombe expresses his exotic stories in a simple and direct manner filling each panel with a visual style that is fluid and exaggerated. Like a dream, it equally draws from his time as an animator as
Review: The Story of Cruel & Unusual
The Story of Cruel & Unusual Colin Dayan Boston Review/MIT Press Street: 04.30 The story of the eighth amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment and is taken from the English Bill of Rights. While seemingly straightforward in its lay representation (not excessive punishment in light of the crime), Colin Dayan in her concise, erudite and
Review: King-Cat Classix
King-Cat Classix John Porcellino Drawn & Quarterly Street: 05.01 King-Cat Classix is John Porcellino’s memoirs as told in REAL-TIME (even though you are reading past recollections, he turns moments into instants). Caught somewhere between biography and journal (a la American Elf), King-Cat Classix is something like this with wirey panel drawings and an honesty you
Review: Percy Gloom
Percy Gloom Cathy Malkasian Fantagraphics Books Street: 06.21 Percy Gloom was written by Cathy Malkasian whose previous work as an animator includes the shows Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys Movie. Her leap from animation to the graphic novel form (especially from those quirky kids’ shows) is not a far cry from her previous work. Percy
Review: MOME
MOME Various Artists Fantagraphics Books Street: 05.22 MOME follows in the fine footsteps of other anthologies and quarterlies of this century (ex. McSweeney’s) by showcasing first-rate up-and-coming artists, writers, etc. The comics represented here range from self-conscious absurd dream narratives to the surreal pop panel to an extended meditation on depression and comic book creators.
Review: House
House Josh Simmons Fantagraphics Books Street: 03.07 House eerily recalls Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, not so much in its complex storytelling but in its scary incompleteness. House leaves more questions open then it answers. The story is about a mansion three kids find in the woods that they decide to go exploring in.
Review: Buddy Does Jersey
Buddy Does Jersey Peter Bagge Fantagraphics Books Street: 05.15 There is a certain target audience and age for a graphic novel like this; I am thinking mostly of your average music snob, male, age 18-35. The premise and formula is pretty simple––an obnoxious hipster with a neurotic girlfriend, living in Seattle move back to New
Review: The Beautiful Language of My Century: Reinventing the Language...
The Beautiful Language of My Century: Reinventing the Language of Contestion in Postwar France, 1945-1968 Tom McDonough MIT Press Street: 03.30 In The Beautiful Language of My Century, Tom McDonough has his work cut out for him as the topic of the Situationist International and the May ’68 riots are an over-bloated subject. But what